First UCC Hires Jeff Barton as Interim Minister

First UCC is happy to announce it has finalized an agreement with the Reverend Jeff Barton to be the interim minister.  He will be with the church for at least one year, starting August 22.   Jeff is committed to helping the church create a vision for the future and to restructure the church and programs accordingly.  

Jeff Barton has been in United Church of Christ programs and congregations since 1979 when he was a seminary intern at Parkview Congregational UCC in Aurora, Colorado. He has been a pastor, a campus minister, an associate pastor, a senior minister and a UCC conference association minister. Jeff has served the UCC in Idaho, New Hampshire and Montana for longer calls and in Wyoming, Wisconsin and Oregon for shorter terms and interims. He has served as an interim minister in four settings before ours, and is looking to continue to do intentional interim work for the extension of his active ministry career. Jeff has been with Casas Adobes UCC in Tuscon Arizona since February of 2009, with his last Sunday being July 11. He is a native of Minneapolis, and has academic degrees from The Evergreen State College in Olympia, WA and from the Iliff School of Theology in Denver. He now permanently resides among the mountains, rivers and people of the Portland, Oregon area, where he enjoys skiing in the winter and river rafting in the summer. He’s a 21 handicap in golf and prefers jazz and blues in his musical tastes. Jeff has two young adult children. Jed lives and writes in Billings, Montana. Katie (Carleton alum, 2007) has begin her graduate studies in medical school in Portland, Oregon. Jeff has a significant other, Rev. Mary Sue Evers, a UCC pastor in the Portland, OR, area.